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Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble?
brumgrunt writes "Friday marks the 50th day on general release for what was the long-awaited Watchmen movie. But how much money has it made, and how has it measured up to Warner Bros' expectations? Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
When Watchmen shot out of the blocks to an opening weekend of $55m in the US back at the start of March, there were some mutterings of discontent that this wasn't quite the kind of number that Warner Bros was looking for.
Well, to be fair, stateside that puts it at #6 for opening weekend for a Rated R movie. And 64th overall. Worldwide so far it's sitting at $180+ million and, like the article said, DVD and Blu-Ray sales often make a big difference.
... so what is the problem exactly? You've made the #6 most popular R rated movie by opening weekend in the United States. Job well done. I assure you that DVD and Blu-Ray sales will net you a lot of money. Especially with that Curse of the Black Freighter stuff you withheld from the movie.
I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that
It was always going to be a harder sell than a Batman or Spider-man movie ...
For the love of all things binary, I thought it was common knowledge that you cannot compare rated R movies to PG-13 movies. Every single Batman & Spider-man movie has been rated below R.
The movie did well and I'm sure it was worth it.
My work here is dung.
>I've heard that the estimated budget was $100 million. So they've made $80 million over that ...
>so what is the problem exactly?
The usual rule of thumb is that a film needs to make 2.5-3 times it's budget before it's profitable - that allows for everyone in the chain, cinemas etc to get their cut. As such, Watchman needs to make around $300m before it makes the studio happy.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
You're ignoring the opportunity cost. Sure, it'll end up returning 3 times the amount it cost to make, which is a decent profit, but could the studio have spent that money making another (or two, or three other) films that would have done better? If so then Watchmen was the wrong choice. In this case would they have been better off making a couple of PG-13 films?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It was argued that movies like TDK showed that a darker, more serious summer movie could fill seats and rake in cash, and likewise a few years ago The Matrix Reloaded was making money hand over fist long after the hype train was derailed, in spite of an R rating and a relatively cerebral (most would say pretentiously so) story. Both successes challenged conventional wisdom about the summer blockbuster and probably opened the door for Watchmen to a degree.* I worry that Watchmen's unimpressive gross will convince studios to close that door again and be more conservative with content and tone on their big-ticket movies. Where then for Iron Man 2's mooted alcoholism subplot?
*I know Watchmen was in production by the time TDK arrived in 2008, but a lot could've been left on the cutting-room floor if the studio had seen that year's adult superhero movie flop.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Has it, bluntly, been worth the gamble, expense and hassle? "
It's not worth the gamble, expense, and hassle to go see a movie in the theater any more. Speaking as part of the core audience for this movie (as in, I actually own the graphic novel) there is no fucking way that I'll go to a theater to see much of anything any more. I actually found it cheaper to buy an HDTV than to go to the movies once a month for a year. Unfortunately for the Blu-Ray wankers, I also find that an upconverted DVD looks fucking fantastic. If I were the kind of person who paused stills so that I could bitch about compression artifacting maybe I would feel differently. Finally, I find that I rewatch movies less and less these days, so I won't buy the movie on any form of media. At this point it looks like I'll be renting a DVD from Netflix.
The distributors have been ratcheting up the price of getting the print in your movie theater to the point where diminishing returns are in full effect. My understanding is that pretty much none of the ticket price typically goes to a theater. For the price of two people going to see the movie, you can buy the DVD. Or better yet, get netflix for a month. If they want asses in theater seats, they're going to have to drop the cost to the theater. And if they want people to spread buzz about their movies, they're going to need those asses in those seats. The movie industry is going to slaughter itself, and it can't happen soon enough for me — not because I want less movies to be produced, but because I think that moviestars have too much influence in our culture.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Talk about scraping the bottom for story submissions. Are we going to start getting updates to see whether Marley & Me was worth it too?
There was a significant amount of back story missing from the movie. I did not read the graphic novels or any of that stuff and instead watched it without any previous knowledge or experience. There was quite a curve to overcome with regards to character development and the background stories. While most things were answered in some way eventually, the flow was still more confusing than it needed to be and they should have realized that prior to opening day. It wasn't just another "super hero" movie.
What SHOULD they have done? Easy -- release and play some mini episodes that show off the characters in their glory days while promoting the movie itself. This would have built more enthusiasm for the movie and would have given viewers who would not have otherwise been familiar with the characters a greater level of comfort and more ease getting into the story. This could also have resulted in better story development without having to flash back too much.
Fuck the studios' happiness. These are the same people who claimed to the author of FORREST GUMP that there were no net profits to share with him. You remember that bomb, doncha? Only made $330M domestic in theatres. How anybody at that studio could afford to feed a family after that disaster is beyond me. And by "family" I mean "cocaine habit."
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
There's already three announced.
You got your vanilla release, your director's cut and your director's complete cut which'll have Black Freighter interwoven with the Watchmen story.
I for one can't wait till they release the Watchmen Babies edition... V for Vacation sounds awesome
You think that's bad? Lucasarts is still telling David Prowse (the guy who wore the Vader suit) that Return of the Jedi still hasn't turned a profit.
Oh please, step down from your high horse. You just look like an ass.
There's nothing wrong with wanting an intelligent movie. I enjoy them as well. But sometimes I just want something that's just fun to watch, no matter how much the story lacks.
I find it funny how much a penis really bothers people.
You're seriously comparing a movie that did $180 million worldwide to a movie that did $34 million worldwide?? And don't tell me to look at the budgets, granted Serenity's was less but it didn't even make it up.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the hell out of that movie, but using it to predict Watchmen's performance is a little fallacious...
Where is this rule of thumb? This is Hollywood accounting by the way where Forrest Gump with a budget of $55 million grossed over $670 million at the box office but was declared "unprofitable" by Paramount in order to avoid paying royalties to Winston Groom who wrote the novel. Mr. Groom unfortunately did not know that most of Hollywood write their contracts to get a cut of the gross not the net revenue because the infamous Hollywood accounting. Paramount later settled their dispute with Winston only because they really wanted to make the sequel.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
There is a reason for this, the expectation of watching in a Movie Theater is different from watch at home on DVD
For Movie Theaters there is an expected time span, expected content (enough "backstory" so people who just decided on a whim to see it will understand what's going on, but not all the small nuances that true fans enjoy), and rated low enough to grab the widest audience.
For DVDs there is an expectation for in-depth information (commentaries, blooper reels, featuretts, etc.), more freedom given to time span (put it on pause for a bathroom break, or sit down tomorrow night and select the chapter you left off at), and a bigger market for rated R or 'unrated' material (Unrated editions of just about every movie ever made, and they're selling them at Wallmart!)
So, while it is an 'incomplete' movie as far as comparing it to the directors cut, it is complete as far as Movie Theater expectations.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Kevin Bolk is drawing "Watchbabies" strips on his art site. They're actually quite funny.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I often prefer the theater cut to the "extended" or "unrated" or "special" edition. Most of the time, the material that I see in the extra scenes drags on, and it is readily apparent WHY that material was left out in the first place.
Oh they profit from the investment, it's only on paper that they don't profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Basically if you give all the money to other companies that arent your company but really are because you are both owned by the same people, you've on paper lost a ton of money (they call it gross), but that's only on paper.
Whats funny to me is that after screwing over the author of Forest Gump, the studios approached him for rights to the sequel. As the wiki page mentions, he told them he "he cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure." So, good job guys, you've ensured you're never going to make money from the second movie.
I swear if people across this country put half the thought into their buisness that they do into how to cheat their way into more money, we'd have no economic troubles and would nationally be 10 trillion in black rather than in red. And we'd have much better movies.
You do not want this movie to be financially successful, otherwise the studio will insist on producing a sequel.
That would be LucasFILM... not LucasARTS. Lucasarts makes video games and were one of the best studios around until they started churning 100% Star Wars crap....
Lucasfilm once had some of the best films under its belt until it started churning out Star Wars "prequel" crap..
Hmmm... I see a pattern emerging.....
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